Opinions Are Like...

When Film School Rejects announced Lana Wachowski's atrociously bad The Matrix Resurrections as their Movie of the Year 2021, you can bet it sparked plenty of ridicule. Not that I care about the obvious feedback over what was essentially a publicity stunt. Shameless sites reliant on rage clicks got to earn a bob or two to make a living, I guess. Dada Debaser is not adverse to putting its neck on the chopping block when it comes to contentious opinions. What's presented below is an assortment of twenty personal opinions which probably goes against the grain of the popular consesus:

1. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) is the only legitimate classic by the director. However, the film has one serious issue that rarely ever gets addressed: how are film connoisseurs going to pretend the "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" scene was not lifted from Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955) and let it fly? At least Sergio Martino was honest enough to admit he pulled the same stunt in Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), whilst Kubrick took it with him to the grave.

 

2. Daniel Craig's tenure as James Bond is the worst official portrayal of the British secret agent, surpassing George Lazenby's wooden performance, from his only outing in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Seeing Bond rebooted as an unrecognisable miserable wreck of a man over the course of five films has been disasterous in the long run and no doubt had Ian Flemming spinning in his grave.

 

3. The term 'feminist horror' is nothing more than a superflous division in the horror genre. Horror movies, regardless of merit, have always appealed to women, way before the buzzphrase was even coined. The term is nothing more than a marketing gimmick appeasing gullible pseudo-intellectuals who originally wrote off the genre due to their own ignorance.

 

4. Ken Loach's kitchen sink drama Kes (1969) has only one real highlight; the football match with Brian Glover's rough and tumble P.E. teacher. That's why it's the go to scene played whenever it's dragged into any discussion.

5. The only Paul Thomas Anderson film ever worth revisiting is Boogie Nights (1998).

6. John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. (1996) gets way too much undeserved hate. The fact that both critics and audiences weren't able to distinguish that it was equally a remix and sequel in a similar vein to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II (1987), says more about them than it does for the film. It's also blessed with one of the most unequivocally cool endings ever.

7. The prayer scene from Enzo Milloni's largely inept and utterly sleazy, The Sister of Ursula (1978), is an unexpectedly powerful profound moment, thus granting it a greater level of appreciation from me than any of the overpraised Italian modernist scene, since it bodies anything I've witnessed by the likes of Antonioni or Fellini.

8. Still consider myself a fan, but Quentin Tarantino really should have retired way before his tenth film pledge. His films over the last two decades were in desperate need of an editor that didn't kiss his arse.

9. Both St. Trinian's (2007) and St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold (2009) are some of the best examples of modern reboots done right. They also happen to be the only movies other than Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) that redeem Rupert Everett's entire career.

10. With the exception of Raising Arizona (1987), all of the Coen Bros' movies feel massively overrated, cursed with abrupt and horrible endings.

11. The Terminator (1984), is still better than it's sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). The reason why the sequel is embraced so highly over its predecessor, is the fact that it is the Year Zero movie for the millennial generation. They were around ten or eleven years of age at the time of its release, which made it all the more impressionable on them seeing Edward Furlong as one of their own (even though he's a Gen X'er and the film was set in 1995).

12. Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981) is leagues better than his amusing take on Nineteen Eighty-Four with the film Brazil (1985) and has endless quotables.

13. Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz (2007) is the best film in the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, as it's the only film where Simon Pegg does not act like a selfish and whiny manchild throughout the film. 

14. Christopher Nolan makes movies for dumb people that makes them feel intelligent. It's the reason why he is credited as an important auteur by reddit brainlets in r/movies and r/truefilm.

15. Matthew McConaughy received the right Oscar for the wrong film. It should have been for his performance as Vilmer in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994).

16. Even if you combined the works of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton together, it still wouldn't be as good as Laurel & Hardy's films. Criterion not recognising this obvious fact, is the reason why the label and its army of clueless collectors will always be considered as a pretentious bunch of fools by me.

17. Franck Khalhoun's remake of Maniac (2012) is better than William Lustig's 1980 original version. A major reason why is Elijah Wood's Frank Zito. He is far more effective as a predator to women, since he oozes the vibe of a human cuttlefish without even trying. Spinell's Frank Zito being in a five block radius with Caroline Munro breaks all suspension of disbelief.

18. The only really worthwhile English language movies directed by Guillermo del Toro, are Mimic (1997) and Blade II (2002). 

19. Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1988), is a laboriously dull animated feature film and it's crazy finale feels too little too late to make amends. One of the most disappointing movie experiences I ever had.

20. The last decent Woody Allen film was nearly forty years ago with Zelig (1983). He has made nothing remotely entertaining since then.

EDIT - Genuinely surprised a real scholar not only uploaded onto YouTube a scene from The Sister of Ursula (1978), but the prayer scene, and in high definition. Automatically subbed.